Bucknell University Press

Jocelyn Harris’s new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, continues to receive high accolades. Read on for praise for the recent publication.

Please follow this link to a page where you can purchase Jocelyn Harris’s new book:
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In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Jocelyn Harris argues that Jane Austen was a satirist, a celebrity-watcher, and a keen political observer. In Mansfield Park, she appears to base Fanny Price on Fanny Burney, criticize the royal heir as unfit to rule, and expose Susan Burney’s cruel husband through Mr. Price. In Northanger Abbey, she satirizes the young Prince of Wales as the vulgar John Thorpe; in Persuasion, she attacks both the regent’s failure to retrench, and his dangerous desire to become another Sun King. For Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, Austen may draw on the actress Dorothy Jordan, mistress of the pro-slavery Duke of Clarence, while her West Indian heiress in Sanditonmay allude to Sara Baartman, who was exhibited in Paris and London as “The Hottentot Venus,” and adopted as a test case by the abolitionists. Thoroughly researched and elegantly written, this new book by Jocelyn Harris contributes significantly to the growing literature about Austen’s worldiness by presenting a highly particularized web of facts, people, texts, and issues vital to her historical moment.

REVIEWS

“Harris is well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author…. In her latest book her expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.”
—Emma Clery, University of Southampton; Times Literary Supplement (February 2018)

“New Zealand academic Jocelyn Harris’s excellent Satire, Celebrity and Politics in Jane Austen published early this year shows what a keen political observer Austen was, and how her interest in the celebrities of the day, such as actress Dorothea Jordan and Sara Baartman (an African woman with very large buttocks who was exhibited in English freak shows as “the Hottentot Venus”), influenced and inspired characters in Austen’s fiction.”
—Susannah Fullerton; The Australian (July 2017)

“[T]his is a wonderfully rich and convincing presentation of much new material. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.
—CHOICE

“This book is an enjoyable one for anyone who has read Austen’s novels or watched productions of them on television…. Jocelyn Harris is an excellent writer. For an academic study, the usual jargon and allusions to various post-modern theories are happily absent in this book. It is packed with detail and citations. It’s is valuable for Cook enthusiasts because of its chapter on Molesworth Phillips, and the broader considerations surrounding the death of Captain Cook.”
—Cook’s Log

“Satire, Celebrity, and Politics is unfailingly fascinating in its dissection of Jane Austen, the satirist, and the text is enhanced by a well-chosen selection of contemporary portraits and gloriously scurrilous cartoons. The ‘stories behind the stories’ always make for an interesting read and Harris has produced a book that will be read with great pleasure by academics and devoted readers alike.”
—Jane Austen’s Regency World

“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read.… [It] responds to, and expands upon, the work of critics who have demonstrated that Austen was so much more than the domestic, apolitical novelist her family portrayed her to be.… Harris reinforces the image of Austen as a well-informed and sharp-minded woman who was seriously engaged with the socio-political issues of the day…. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restrained, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for sature in the process.”
—Elles Smallgoor; Burney Newsletter

“Jocelyn Harris’s book, which reflects on the ways in which Jane Austen’s work may have been influenced by what she knew about certain celebrities of her time, is a pleasant and accessible read…. On the whole…I would emphasise the thorough research into the socio-historical context that has gone into this book, and which makes it of interest to anyone who would like to know more of current events during Austen’s lifetime.”
—Rita J. Dashwood, The Jane Austen Society (Spring 2018)

“In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, University of Otago Emeritus Professor Jocelyn Harris approaches Austen in terms of the world in which she lived, using what is known of everything from her social networks to contemporary media portrayals of prominent figures, to argue that her novels are much more than mere domestic dramas…. Although primarily an academic text, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics has much of interest here for the lay reader too. The glimpses it offers into regency England and diversions into topics as diverse as the disputed accounts of Cook’s death and the misbehavior of the Prince Regent are as interesting as the primary analysis…. [Harris’s formidable thesis] is standing its ground in the fierce world of Austen scholarship.”
—Cushla McKinney, The Otago Daily Times (July 2018)

“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels…. Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer…. It is difficult to find any scholarship on these subjects that is simultaneously attentive to Austen’s fiction, to the history of theory and criticism, and to the minutiae of Austen family history and biography. Harris weaves all of these kinds of evidence and arguments together to great effect…. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
—Devoney Looser, Arizona State University

“Last year’s bicentenary commemoration of the death of Jane Austen has given her readers many reasons for celebration. This book is one of them…. Jocelyn Harris in this careful, enthusiastic and learned book shows how Jane Austen achieves vision through observation and creates a new and distinctive world from a recognisable world.”
—Tony Voss, Jane Austen Society of Australia

SUMMER 2018

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Playing the Martyr: Theater and Theology in Early Modern France
By Christopher Semk

“Playing the Martyr is an accomplished study, liberally peppered with well-chosen and pertinent anecdotes and observations, managing to maintain that elusive balance of erudition and readability…The topic of martyrs, or more broadly hagiographic literature, has interested scholars for a couple of decades, giving rise to fresh readings of individual plays, authors, or saints. Christopher Semk’s book is a welcome contribution to this field and proves that researchers should not overlook, nor overgeneralize, this window into the early modern period.”
-Paul Scott, University of Kansas; H-France Review (18.132), June 2018

The Ladies of Llangollen: Desire, Indeterminacy, and the Legacies of Criticism
By Fiona Brideoake

“Reading this book is a delight. Brideoake deftly deflects certainty, enjoyably poking holes in centuries of scholarship and speculation. She is self-aware, noting that the desire to set aside a determination is a reaction to those same centuries of fruitless recontextualizing, reflecting a rhetorical turn away from defining subsets of queerness by what goes on behind closed doors…This is a long overdue contribution to the scholarly record, challenging first and foremost Elizabeth Mavor’s landmark 1971 biography, which positioned the Ladies as “romantic friends” who remained chaste. Brideoake’s readings of both early-life documents (chapter 1) and mythologizing texts published near the time of the Ladies’ deaths (chapter 7) are unparalleled elsewhere…It would be a value purchase for anyone invested in queer, feminist, or class history.”
-Allana Mayer, graduate of the Masters of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) program (2014) from McGill University; Eighteenth-Century Fiction (30.4), 2018

Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen
By Jocelyn Harris

“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read…Considering the fact that Frances Burney and other members of the Burney family feature prominently in [Austen’s] allusions, [Harris’] book, by extension, sheds new light on the cultural influence of the Burneys on their contemporaries…the book gives shape to an Austen who was an avid and grateful consumer of the latest gossip, scandals and satirical prints about those from whom she was never far removed: famous writers, intellectuals and actresses, big naval figures, the royal family. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restricted, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for satire in the process.”
-Elles Smallegoor; Burney Letter, The Burney Society, Spring 2018 (24.1)

“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels… For readers willing to engage with the possible, and to consider links that do not, at first glance, seem probable, Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer… Harris’s arguments are highly illuminating. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
-Devoney Looser, Arizona State University; The Review of English Studies, New Series, 1–3

Memory, War and Dictatorship in Recent Spanish Fiction by Women
By Sarag Leggott

“In recent years, memory has come to the fore of Spanish cultural studies, inspiring a plethora of articles, conferences and books. Sarah Leggott’s oeuvre focuses on the gendered dimensions of the concepts that have dominated Spanish memory studies, such as post-memory and Republican memory, while also reconceiving the traditionally feminist subjects of the mother-daughter relationship and the absent mother as important vectors of memory transmission…This book is a welcome and original addition to the burgeoning field of memory studies, and would be suitable for college-level undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It would be of particular interest to scholars working in the fields of Hispanic gender and memory studies.”
-Lorraine Ryan, University of Birmingham; Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume XCV, No. 1 (2018)

Don Quixote: The Re-Accentuation of the World’s Greatest Literary Hero
Ed. by Slav N. Gratchev and Howard Mancing

“The 17 essays in this volume, which also includes an introduction by Gratchev (Marshall Univ.) and Mancing (Purdue Univ.), take as their point of departure the concept of re-accentuation, initially proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin in The Dialogic Imagination (1975; Eng. tr., 1981). The interpretive and analytical openness of key works of prose fiction allow for re-reading and re-imagination in subsequent ages and through different media and approaches…The essays are intriguing in their range and methodologies, and they become testaments to the afterlife—what Bakhtin termed the “unfinalizability”—of Don Quixote in both public and artistic spheres.”
– E. H. Friedman, Vanderbilt University; CHOICE, 55.9 (May 2018)

Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas
By Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta

“Anonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta has taken the field of inter-American studies in his own direction. Pioneered by Earl Fitz, Gustavo Pérez Firmat, Nina Scott, Elizabeth Lowe, and Sophia McClennen (to name only a few), this approach unites the Americas through the comparative method…Tosta’s prose is clear, engaging, and jargon-free. Any class or study on inter-American literature could use this book, but also any study of authors and populations that were treated in isolation before (Japanese and African Americans) would benefit from this well-researched, fascinating, and interdisciplinary work of multicultural scholarship.”
– John Maddox, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Comparative Literature Studies, Volume 54, No. 4 (2017)

Fixing Babel: An Historical Anthology of Applied English Lexicography
Ed. by Rebecca Shapiro

“Fixing Babel: An Historical Anthology of Applied English Lexicography, edited by Rebecca Shapiro, offers an invaluable collection of the explanatory front matter written by dictionary authors from the early seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. This unique collation, beautifully edited with instructive commentary, enables readers to grasp the shifting dynamic of descriptive and prescriptive elements used by lexicographers in documenting the ever-widening scope of English language use in the documented time frame.”
– Lowell Gallagher, University of California, Los Angeles; SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, Volume 58, No. 1 (Winter 2018)

Read the latest reviews for Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen by Jocelyn Harris:

“Jocelyn Harris in this careful, enthusiastic and learned book shows how Jane Austen achieves vision through observation and creates a new and distinctive world from a recognisable world.”
-Tony Voss, Jane Austen Society of Australia

“Burney scholars will find Jocelyn Harris’s latest book Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen an enriching read…Considering the fact that Frances Burney and other members of the Burney family feature prominently in [Austen’s] allusions, [Harris’] book, by extension, sheds new light on the cultural influence of the Burneys on their contemporaries…the book gives shape to an Austen who was an avid and grateful consumer of the latest gossip, scandals and satirical prints about those from whom she was never far removed: famous writers, intellectuals and actresses, big naval figures, the royal family. With a keen eye for detail, Harris exposes the subtle connections between the unrestrained, public laughter surrounding such figures and the more restricted, oblique laughter in the novels, thereby deepening our understanding of Austen’s skill for satire in the process.”
-Elles Smallegoor; Burney Letter, The Burney Society, Spring 2018 (24.1)

“Harris’s impressive new book, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen (2017), builds on the work of her pioneering 1989 study, deepening our sense of what Austen may have been up to in crafting her novels… For readers willing to engage with the possible, and to consider links that do not, at first glance, seem probable, Harris’s well-written, deeply researched, and timely book has a great deal to offer… Harris’s arguments are highly illuminating. For years to come, readers and critics will be weighing the massive number of new insights in this book, troubling through their implications for our future readings of Austen, politics, history, and popular culture.”
-Devoney Looser, Arizona State University; The Review of English Studies, New Series, 1–3

“Harris is well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author…In her latest book her expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.”
-Emma Clery, University of Southampton; Times Literary Supplement (February 2018)

“New Zealand academic Jocelyn Harris’s excellent Satire, Celebrity and Politics in Jane Austen published early this year shows what a keen political observer Austen was, and how her interest in the celebrities of the day, such as actress Dorothea Jordan and Sara Baartman (an African woman with very large buttocks who was exhibited in English freak shows as “the Hottentot Venus”), influenced and inspired characters in Austen’s fiction.”
-Susannah Fullerton; The Australian (July 2017)

“[T]his is a wonderfully rich and convincing presentation of much new material. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.
–CHOICE

“This book is an enjoyable one for anyone who has read Austen’s novels or watched productions of them on television…. Jocelyn Harris is an excellent writer. For an academic study, the usual jargon and allusions to various post-modern theories are happily absent in this book. It is packed with detail and citations. It’s is valuable for Cook enthusiasts because of its chapter on Molesworth Phillips, and the broader considerations surrounding the death of Captain Cook.”
–Cook’s Log

“Satire, Celebrity, and Politics is unfailingly fascinating in its dissection of Jane Austen, the satirist, and the text is enhanced by a well-chosen selection of contemporary portraits and gloriously scurrilous cartoons. The ‘stories behind the stories’ always make for an interesting read and Harris has produced a book that will be read with great pleasure by academics and devoted readers alike.”
–Jane Austen’s Regency World

“Jocelyn Harris’ book, which reflects on the ways in which Jane Austen’s work may have been influenced by what she knew about certain celebrities of her time, is a pleasant and accessible read…I would emphasize the thorough research into the socio-historical context that has gone into this book, and which makes it of interest to anyone who would like to know more of current events during Austen’s lifetime.”
-Rita J. Dashwood; The Jane Austen Society (Spring 2018)

In 2011, Barack Obama made a Presidential Proclamation that designated the month of June as National Caribbean American Heritage Month in the United States.  To commemorate this time when we celebrate the history and culture of Caribbean Americans, the Bucknell University Press is showcasing a few of our books that cover Caribbean topics.

Many of these selections are a part of our Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory series, edited by Anibal González, Professor of Spanish at Yale University. The aim of the series is to provide a forum for the best criticism on Latin American literature in a wide range of critical approaches, with an emphasis on works that productively combine scholarship with theory. We have also included a title from our general collection that covers national identities across the Americas, a memoir of Puerto Rican writer Rosario Ferré, and an edition of the Bucknell Review (1941-2004) that is is devoted to analyses of Caribbean cultural identities.

Celebrate the beginning of summer and National Caribbean American Heritage Month with the spirit of Caribbean culture captured in these books. Follow the links in the list below for more information on each title.

From Amazons to Zombies: Monsters in Latin America (2016)
By Persephone Braham
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Confluence Narratives: Ethnicity, History, and Nation-Making in the Americas (2016)
By Antonio Luciano de Andrade Tosta

Macho Ethics: Masculinity and Self-Representation in Latino-Caribbean Narrative (2015)
By Jason Cortés
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Memoir (2015)
By Rosario Ferré
Translated by: Suzanne Hintz & Benigno Trigo

Transatlantic Travels in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: European Women Pilgrims (2013)
By Adriana Méndez Rodenas
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Voices Out of Africa in Twentieth-Century Spanish Caribbean Literature (2009)
By Julia Cuervo Hewitt
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Out of Bounds: Islands and the Demarcation of Identity in the Hispanic Caribbean (2008)
By Dara Goldman
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

Caribbean Cultural Identities (2001)
Edited by Glyne Griffith
Bucknell Review (44.2)

 

 

 

 

 

The Bucknell University Press Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series, edited by Katherine Faull and Alfred Siewers, has inspired a series of documentary projects funded by Bucknell, with one film produced by WVIA and several others produced by Bucknell students.  The book series itself seeks to develop interdisciplinary and multimedia approaches to the concept of region, place, and ethics in environmental studies. As Faull explains, “The Stories of the Susquehanna Book Series with the Bucknell University Press provides a traditional print format for scholarly research that focuses on the interconnectedness of people and place in the Susquehanna Watershed.”  While including a range of disciplines, from sciences and social sciences to literature and philosophy, the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley book series articulates narratives of an eco-region that played a formative, if often hidden, role in the early American republic, and which today provides potential models for more environmentally sustainable approaches to human community.  The editors of the series are also involved in the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley series of documentary projects.  According to Faull, “Where the documentary projects, both those that are student-produced and the WVIA-Bucknell collaborative undertakings, explore these stories in a public-facing genre, the book series attracts scholarship of the highest caliber on the Susquehanna that further informs and deepens the subject matter of the video productions.”

Faull was involved in the production of a film in the series entitled Peoples of the Susquehanna, which examines the history, culture, and traditions of the Native Americans of the river watershed.  The trailer can be viewed on pbs.org or the full film watched here with a WVIA Passport membership.  According to Siewers, “The recent WVIA-TV hour-length documentary Peoples of the Susquehanna was based on the first book in the [Bucknell University Press] series [Native Americans in the Susquehanna River Valley, Past and Present by David J. Minderhout] and connects with an upcoming volume.”  He explains, “The half-hour documentaries Utopian Dreams and Coopers and Conservation are likewise related to a planned volume.” Three of the documentaries are student-produced under Siewers’ guidance and are entitled Utopian Dreams, The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna, and The Churches of Coal Country.  The first in the series, Utopian Dreams, focuses on two 18th-century river communities and their diverging visions of society, and can be viewed for free on pbs.org.  The second film, The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna, examines the literary and conservation legacy of 19th-century authors James Fenimore Cooper and his daughter, Susan Fenimore Cooper. Key figures in American nature writing, the Coopers and their work helped to establish an early ethic of environmental stewardship at the Susquehanna River’s headwaters in Cooperstown, NY. This film has just been recently finished and is scheduled to broadcast on Thursday, May 31^st at 8pm with encores on Friday, June 1st at 2pm and Sunday, June 3rd at 1pm.  The Churches of Coal Country, the third in the student-produced series, is currently under production and will examine Slavic immigrant communities in Mount Carmel, PA.  It will cover similar themes found in another book from the series called Coal Dust on Your Feet: The Rise, Decline, and Restoration of an Anthracite Mining Town by Janet MacGaffey.

As Siewers explains, “Books and documentaries are two methods of exploring the region and highlighting its cultures in our series.”  Both Siewers and Faull are dedicated to highlighting the historical and cultural significance of the Susquehanna corridor.  According to Siewers, the book and documentary projects are focused on “developing digital story maps and other materials related to the rich landscape layers of culture and natural history in what some geologists consider to be America’s oldest river watershed.”  From books to films, the Stories of the Susquehanna Valley projects convey themes of interconnectedness across communities along the river and celebrate the shared environment through creative and informational perspectives.

Update: The Coopers and Conservation at the Headwaters of the Susquehanna can now be viewed online for free here.

Happy Birthday to Beverly Cleary! Author of the beloved Quimby sister stories, Cleary, born on April 12^th, 1916, celebrates her 102^nd birthday today! Inspired by her own experiences in the world around her, Cleary first started writing to create the books that she longed to read but could never find on library shelves. Most of her stories take place in the Grant Park neighborhood of northeast Portland, Oregon, where she was raised. Today she is a celebrated author of children’s and young adult fiction, with more than 90 million books sold worldwide since her first book, Henry Huggins, was published in 1950. Perhaps her most popular books revolve around the sisters Beezus and Ramona Quimby—the first, entitled Beezus and Ramona, published in 1955. Since then, the books have even inspired a movie adaption, Ramona and Beezus, released in 2010. More than half a century since the publication of Beverly Cleary’s first book, her stories remain popular with readers of all ages, passed down from generation to generation. Childhood favorites of my own experience were Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew Mystery Stories. First published in 1930, this too became a series to span generations. My own mother shared them with me, and from these books I learned to love reading. At age 102, I am sure that Beverly Cleary has provided that same experience for girls and boys alike whose parents became enchanted by Cleary’s charming humor and memorable characters.

http://www.beverlycleary.com/

Jocelyn Harris’ 2017 book with Bucknell University Press, Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, has recently caught the attention of Times Literary Supplement (TLS). A special segment, entitled “What Jane Saw: Exploring Austen’s creative hinterland and recoverable influences,” features some of the highlights of Harris’ book and its contributions to Jane Austen scholarship. The article is written by Emma Clery, a specialist of the cultural history surrounding Jane Austen and Professor of English at the University of Southampton. In Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, Clery explains, Jocelyn Harris’ “expertise and questing curiosity are brought to bear on a set of themes that have not generally been associated with Austen.” She goes on to summarize Harris’ main points, giving readers of TLS a glimpse into the book which highlights Jane Austen’s position as a satirist, her character inspirations in the form of celebrities, and how these elements contributed to an underlying commentary on politics within Austen’s novels. While Harris explores these topics in Satire, Celebrity, and Politics, Clery also gives mention to her previous publications (Jane Austen’s Art of Allusion and A Revolution Beyond Expression: Jane Austen’s “Persuasion”), all of which have made Harris “well established as a guide to the wider thought-world of the author.” To read the full article, see the February 9, 2018 edition of TLS, or subscribe to their database.

To order Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen visit www.rowman.com or call 1-800-462-6420.  Prices are $110 for cloth (978-1-61148-839-5) and $104 for eBook (978-1-61148-843-2).